Law withholds cruise-safety information

Ever since Kendall Carver's daughter mysteriously disappeared on an Alaskan cruise in 2004, he has dedicated his life to holding the cruise-line industry more accountable for passenger safety.

The retired Phoenix businessman believed he succeeded in 2010 with the passage of federal legislation that was supposed to reveal the full picture of the deaths, sexual assaults, thefts, missing persons and other crimes reported on cruise ships.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., who sponsored the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, promised the bill would provide greater transparency about crimes on passenger ships operating out of U.S. ports.

However, unknown to Carver and other supporters, the bill was changed shortly before it passed to provide less, not more, information about cruise-ship crime.

A Call 12 for Action investigation discovered that Kerry's own office was responsible for altering the bill without alerting other stakeholders about the changes. Kerry's press secretary acknowledged for the first time publicly last month that the bill was changed to hold back information about cases at the request of the FBI and U.S. Coast Guard.

"The bill is being sabotaged. ... The FBI is using the regulation to gut the intent of the bill," he said. "The FBI and the Coast Guard, the very people who should be looking out for United States citizens, have watered this thing down."

The new act requires cruise lines to report all serious crimes aboard ships to the FBI. Originally, it required the U.S. Coast Guard to maintain a public database of all serious crimes on cruise ships. Language added before its passage altered the bill so that only crimes "no longer under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation" were reported in the public database.

The upshot: The public is not allowed to see reports of all alleged crimes aboard ships. Where the FBI once publicly reported more than 400 crimes a year, only six crimes on ships in the past nine months have been listed on the public database. And cases not investigated by the FBI -- for example, allegations handled by a ship's security staff -- never will be reported in the database under the new law.

Now, Carver and other cruise-safety experts say the industry is using the lack of crime reports to suggest that ocean liners are safer than they have ever been.

Carver and supporters of the legislation had no idea it had been changed until last year, when the first crime reports were posted. They spent months trying to determine how and why the wording in the bill was altered.

Matsui, in an April television interview, said her office was investigating how the language made it into the bill. She accused the FBI of misinterpreting the bill and said withholding crime statistics was counter to the law's intent.

The FBI and the Coast Guard would not comment on the changes in the bill or respond to questions about the crime-reporting statistics.

"We are not at liberty to discuss any information we may have fed into the legislative review process," FBI spokeswoman Denise Ballew said in an e-mail Friday.

Kerry's office did not elaborate on what evidence, if any, the FBI used to determine that releasing crime statistics on cruise ships would affect investigations.

However, both congressional offices say they plan to correct problems in the original bill.

"It's hardly the last word on the subject or the last effort needed to correct problems Mr. Carver and others identified," Smith said.

Safer than land?

More than 16 million people took cruise vacations worldwide in 2011.

The cruise industry, which supports the law as written, for years has maintained that cruises are one of the safest ways to travel and that a person is far more likely to be a victim of crime at home than aboard a ship.

Crime statistics tell a different story, according to Ross Klein, a professor of sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada.

"It is not safer than being on land. Passengers need to know that they are at risk," said Klein, who has written four books on cruise safety and testified at U.S. congressional hearings on oversight of the cruise industry.

Klein said that research based on crime reports from the FBI in 2007-08 showed that a person was more than 50 percent more likely to be assaulted on one popular cruise line than on land in Canada.

And Klein said that at a minimum, 18 percent of all crime incidents on ships involve minors. "You shouldn't be letting your child run around thinking that it is perfectly safe," he said.

Before the bill passed, cruise ships were self-regulating and not required under U.S. law to report crimes that took place in international waters.

Ships in national waters, which extend 12 miles from land, were required to report crimes to the FBI. Most cruise lines, however, voluntarily provided the FBI with the crime data.

The new law mandates that all cruise lines operating out of U.S. ports keep a log of reported crimes and provide them to the FBI.

But the public does not get to see what crimes are reported to the FBI or even all of the cases opened by the FBI.

On a website updated quarterly by the Coast Guard, only cases closed by the FBI are made public. The total number of closed cases reported on the website last year was 16. Six have been reported in the past nine months.

Critics say, at best, that represents 20 percent of crimes reported on cruises.

"The FBI is not including all alleged crimes, but only those that they open a file on, minus those under investigation. They only open a file on 10 to 20 percent of alleged crimes," International Cruise Victims Association President Jamie Barnett wrote in a February complaint letter to the FBI.

"No agency or entity should be allowed to determine which cases are to be reported, counted and listed ... and which aren't," Barnett wrote.

David Peikin, spokesman for the Cruise Lines International Association, which is made up of 26 cruise lines operating in North America, said the industry supported the legislation and "the stringent safeguards it provides for passengers and crew."

Peikin said the language added to the bill over crime reporting did not come from the cruise-line industry.

He said critics are distorting issues surrounding crime-reporting requirements and added that the industry is following the rules on crime reporting.

"Any controversy ... has been created by a small minority of vocal, biased industry critics who lack objectivity as it pertains to the cruise industry and the crime reporting elements of the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act," Peikin said in an e-mail statement.

Peikin said that "what gets posted on that website is entrusted to the federal agencies responsible for implementing the (act)."

He said congressional hearings on cruise-ship safety before the bill's passage "established that the cruise industry was complying fully with the federal crime reporting requirements based on statements from the Coast Guard and the FBI," and "indisputably demonstrated that crime on cruise ships is extremely rare."

Less data, not more

The public had more access to the number and types of crimes reported aboard cruise ships before the act passed, records show.

For instance, crime reports voluntarily provided to the FBI by cruise ships operating out of U.S. ports in 2007-08, and available through the Freedom of Information Act, showed there were 421 incidents reported, ranging from assaults to deaths, among the millions of cruisers that year.

Klein analyzed the reports and was able to determine the types of crime reported most frequently on specific cruise lines and ships.

His research showed there were allegations of 115 assaults and more than 150 alleged sexual assaults or sexual contacts reported aboard the ships in 2007-08. There were also reports of 101 thefts, 12 of more than $10,000, nine deaths and seven overboards.

Records similar to the 2007-08 crime reports are not available through the Freedom of Information Act today.

Carver said attempts to obtain copies of similar crime reports beginning in 2011 have been stymied by the FBI. Last year, after a series of meetings with FBI officials, he got only minimal information.

The FBI provided a copy of all crime reports for 2011, but six of eight pages were redacted, leaving only 24 cases visible. The FBI gave no explanation for why the remaining cases were withheld.

Carver also struggled to learn the number of cases opened by the FBI and the number of convictions related to shipboard crime.

"There were 66 total incidents," Carver said. "At a minimum, I'd say it represents a quarter of all of the cases. But I'd say it's more like 15 percent." Carver based his estimate on previous years' crime reports.

He said the FBI's reluctance to provide data and the fact that it apparently sought to limit access to ship-crime reports has left him with little hope that the agency will willingly release the records.

Carver said a key goal of the bill was to create a shipboard record of crime statistics, similar to reports compiled every year by police departments across America and published annually by the FBI since 1958 as the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics.

"It was supposed to be comprehensive," Carver said. "It's really less than we had before."

Industry connections

News that changes in the bill were requested by the FBI and the Coast Guard raises questions about the cruise industry's influence over law enforcement, according to critics.

Critics also express concern that several of the bill's provisions have been only partly adopted or in some cases not at all.

Over the past two years, Carver and Barnett have complained of perceived conflicts of interest, including quarterly meetings hosted by the Cruise Lines Industry Association attended by members of the FBI and the Coast Guard. They note that former high-ranking FBI agents and Coast Guard members now work for the cruise-line industry.

In a March e-mail to the FBI, Carver and Barnett said government officials should not be attending meetings hosted by industries they are supposed to regulate.

"We feel it then becomes difficult for the agencies to maintain any sort of objectivity," they wrote.

Peikin denies the meetings pose any kind of conflict and describes them as necessary for sharing security information and to coordinate with law enforcement.

He pointed out that thousands of companies tap former law-enforcement officers to provide in-house security because of their training and background.

"To suggest that distinguished military veterans and former federal law-enforcement officials -- as well as current members of federal law enforcement -- are compromised in their ethics is offensive," he said. "It is also another example of the outlandish and unsupported allegations that are made by the industry critics."

Other issues Carver cited in letters to the FBI include:

Certifying crew members on evidence preservation. Carver said the Coast Guard enacted a program without any way to test a crew member's competency. He said administration of the program is left to the cruise line.

Adding acoustic hailing devices to protect cruise ships from terrorism attacks by emitting a high-power sound wave. Carver said the Coast Guard determined ships must be sailing in "high risk" waters before they were needed, nullifying the provision.

Installing systems to detect someone falling overboard. Carver said the Coast Guard is delaying implementation while it studies potential costs.

Neither the FBI nor the Coast Guard responded to interview requests on issues related to the bill.

Starting-point legislation

When Kerry and Matsui introduced the legislation, they said it would help put an end to a cycle of crime aboard passenger vessels and promised the bill would provide greater transparency of the cruise industry.

"The tragic loss of Ken Carver's daughter Merrian should serve as a reminder that security and crime-reporting regulations need to be tightened," Kerry said in 2008. "If U.S. passengers are at risk, then U.S. law should hold the industry accountable for their safety."

Now the two lawmakers say the bill was not intended to be a comprehensive measure but rather a starting point for cruise-line accountability and passenger safety. Both said last month that they are pushing for stronger legislation.

Carver, who said he is disappointed by the legislative changes, does not hold the lawmakers responsible. Carver said Kerry's office contacted him last month after Call 12 for Action's inquiry about the legislative changes. He said Kerry's staff took responsibility for changing the bill.

"They were hoodwinked," Carver said. "I think they are all embarrassed. I think they were surprised when they found out."

He added that Kerry staffers handling the bill likely did not understand the impact of the wording changes requested by the FBI and the Coast Guard. "They didn't realize what they were agreeing to," he said.

Learning that Kerry's office was responsible for the language changes in the bill was shocking, he said. Both lawmakers and their staffs had previously expressed outrage over the changes.

Carver said that for months he, lawmakers and other consumer advocates believed the lack of crime reports stemmed from a bad interpretation of the bill by the FBI, and it wasn't until after four meetings with the FBI that the language changes were made explicitly clear.

Neither Kerry nor Matsui would address questions about when they learned Kerry's office was responsible for the legislative changes.

Kerry and Matsui said last month that they are working on strengthening the crime-reporting requirements and plan to correct problems in the original bill. Kerry's office pointed to new legislation being sought through the Senate Commerce Committee.

"Like all legislation, we need to remain constantly vigilant that the intent of the law does not get unintentionally circumvented through its implementation," Matsui said.

Words that changed a law

Legislation passed in 2010 was intended to make public all crimes reported on passenger ships operating out of U.S. ports. But language inserted into the bill, at the request of the FBI and U.S. Coast Guard, severely limited public access to crime reports.

Originally written

"The Secretary shall maintain, on an Internet site of the department in which the Coast Guard is operating, a numerical accounting of the missing persons and alleged crimes recorded in each report filed under paragraph (1)(A)."

As passed

"The Secretary shall maintain a statistical compilation of all incidents described in paragraph (3)(A)(i) on an Internet site that provides a numerical accounting of the missing persons and alleged crimes recorded in each report filed under paragraph (3)(A)(i) that are no longer under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Restricted information

Under the new law, the public has access to quarterly reports of crimes aboard cruise ships involving cases closed by the FBI.

The public is not allowed to see reports of:

Cases handled only by cruise-ship officials.

Cases not investigated by the FBI, such as those handled by authorities in other jurisdictions.

From the moment Kendall Carver's daughter disappeared on an Alaskan cruise, he dedicated his life to holding the cruise line industry accountable for passenger safety.

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Veronica Sanchez, Dave Cherry and Robert Anglen lead the Call 12 for Action team. Call 12 for Action has a team of trained volunteers working to help people resolve disputes with companies. Last year, Call 12 helped recover more than $1 million for customers.

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